Days at the Museums

December 5-7, 2018

We had a date to meet Greg and Eugenia at the entrance to the Hong Kong History Museum on Thursday morning. 

We knew the museum was across Chatham Road from Rosary Church, but didn’t know where the entrance was. Or if the museum had more than one.

It’s a good thing that we did, because it can be pretty confusing.

We crossed Chatham by using an overpass at Granville Road. We rode up an escalator and found ourselves in a gentle maze of walkways, ramps, stairs, and more escalators.

We saw a small tour group forming up on the plaza below us. We went down a helical ramp and saw they were standing outside a recess with double doors. 

It didn’t look very main, but it was an entrance. It turned out to be the handicapped access to the building. 

We rode up a long escalator to another plaza on higher ground and saw that it wasn’t only the wrong entrance, but also the wrong building. It was a way to enter the science museum. 

The history museum was across this upper plaza. We went into the museum lobby and looked over a display celebrating Ying Wa College. 

It was founded in Malacca 200 years ago by Rev. Robert Morrison, the first Protestant minister to China. It was originally called the Anglo-Chinese College, and its main purpose was to train Chinese preachers. “Ying Wa” is Cantonese for “English Chinese.”

In the 1840s, after the Brits won the Opium War and took over Hong Kong, the London Missionary Society, which funded the school, decided to move it the new Brit colony.

We didn’t go into the museum itself because we were coming back the next day. So we went to the neighboring science museum instead.

The place was full of kids. We went up the escalator, which took us through a huge pinball machine. On either side of us and overhead was an elaborate track of ups and downs and turnarounds that looked big enough to handle bowling balls. It was at least three stories high.

But alas, it was not operating. I’m not sure if it was still under construction or closed for repair. It would have been a spectacle to see it run.

A new exhibit displaying a scroll with a map of the Silk Road also was closed, due for its debut in a few days. 

The second floor was terrific, full of logic puzzles and quizzes on nutrition. An interactive display asked which part of a pig was used in various products. You had to push buttons till you got the right one.

Hooves in glue and hair for bristles were easy. It got tougher with paint and cosmetics. I don’t even remember the right answers for those categories.

My favorite puzzle was a pair of wood blocks that fit together to make an X. Metal pins inside would slide into place to hold them together. 

Your challenge was to separate them.

Turning the piece one way to slide the pin out caused another pin from the other side to take its place. This happened no matter which way I turned the puzzle.

I had to look at the solution: Spin it. I tried a couple of times with no luck. Then it hit me that I needed to be more vigorous. 

I gave it a spin that lasted a couple of full turns. Centrifugal force moved all the pins out of the way.

There was a model of a ship from the 15th century, Zheng He’s Treasure Ship. It is built according to descriptions from the time, because the plans for the original ship have been lost.

This was part of a fleet of huge ships that traveled with trade goods, including Chinese porcelains, to the east coast of Africa and into the Red Sea to Arabia. 

This was several decades before Vasco da Gama made it to India from the opposite direction. 

We had a dinner engagement with Ron and Mei and several other of Joanna’s friends from the old neighborhood at the Golden Palace in the iSquare Building, where we met them a few weeks ago.

This time there were more people. 

We had a little bit of just about anything that walks, swims, crawls, or grows in the ground, including grilled abalone served chilled, sliced pork also chilled, shark fin soup (made probably not with real shark fin, which is discouraged), steamed grouper, roast chicken. There may have been some goose and duck in the mix too.

When a dozen people sit at the table, everyone gets to try a little of everything. It all adds up, though, and by the time the chicken came, I was full. 

I managed a piece of it. The skin was magnificent, both crisp and dark brown.

The conversation was lively. I could tell by people’s reactions. Most of it was in Cantonese, so I could only pick up a word or two now and then, and had no idea what was going on.

Every once in a while someone would break into English for my sake. 

The restaurant is on the 26th floor with huge windows overlooking Victoria Harbor. John, who was our guide in Tai Hang Sai, was sitting next to me and pointed out the balcony outside the windows. 

My knee was starting to seize up, so I needed to stand. I really liked the idea of going out there.

The door was locked. Someone asked Mr. Wu, the manager, if we could step out there. 

He asked us to wait till the dinner crowd had thinned out. If you go out there, everyone will want to go out there.

So I waited. It was worth it. There was something about being in the breeze with the light drizzle that made the grand view even more stunning.

True enough, not only were the dozen of us out there, but we were followed by a group from a nearby table who were also taking photos.

I had put on a clean shirt for dinner and managed to splash soup on it.

I packed dark shirts so I could get more wearings out of each one, but the sauces and soups, especially when I’m eating noodles with chopsticks, have been frustrating that plan. 

Dessert was sweet soup, as it often is in Hong Kong. Some people had the red bean soup, but most of us had something different, a tan soup made with walnuts. 

It’s an interesting flavor. The walnuts come through the sweetness, which isn’t overwhelming to begin with, and make for a pleasant combination. I’ll opt for this one again sometime.

We met Greg and Eugenia Thursday morning at the history museum, as planned. 

The lobby was mostly screened off because they were taking down the Ying Wa College exhibit. So for the first couple of minutes it seemed that we were in the wrong place. 

We started with the geological history of how the land formed. Rocks and fossils are all right, but maybe you need some training in geology to really find them exciting. 

More to my taste was the jungle diorama. There’s a tapir between two trees and a few feet away a large tiger checking him out. There’s a large black bear looking up a tree at a Burmese python.

It’s like Cabela’s.

More interesting yet are the sections devoted to the local people and their customs. 

I had heard about the Hakka and thought they were the indigenous group before the Cantonese moved in. But no. The Hakka are the “guest people.”

The original people, or at least the earliest recorded here, are the Punti, who came in sometime around 1000 A.D. 

There are a couple of other groups, too.

One of those groups, the Hoklo, used to have a marriage ritual in which female relatives of the groom rowed a dragon boat to pick up the bride on her wedding day.

Now, the practice has evolved into a parade of women in traditional clothes who use colorful sticks as props to pantomime rowing. There is a film of them in action. They are led by a couple of women carrying a dragon figurehead.

Many folk festivals used to be an occasion for puppet theatricals. But that practice has been in decline as people’s tastes have changed and Cantonese opera has replaced it. 

Only a few years ago, I had heard that the opera was a rare thing in Hong Kong and tickets almost impossible to get—like the Rolling Stones, maybe. This year, though, Joanna and I had no trouble getting tickets, even in Hong Kong. 

There are several exhibits showing shrines and places of worship. The photo of the day shows three ceremonial figures about whom I know nothing.

There are also replicas of festival pillars made of steamed buns that rise to heights above 10 meters.

There is a mockup of a small fishing boat, probably of the sort they tied up together in the harbor so Jean-Claude Van Damme could run over them in a chase scene.

A fascinating mockup shows one of the early local industries. There is a device for raising water from one pool to another, where seawater can evaporate to leave salt for harvesting.

For lunch we repaired to a hotel with a Western menu. I had a turkey club sandwich. I haven’t had anything like that for years. It was delicious, even if they did get too prissy and cut the crust off the toast.

Much later Joanna and I went to Tai Woo near the hotel. The place was packed, but they still found room for us.

We had another pigeon, roast goose, and Chinese broccoli. Instead of beer, this time I went for a half bottle of a red Bordeaux. You can’t go wrong with any of this.

Friday was moving day. We’d been in Asia for a month, and it hardly felt like any time at all.

We checked out and left our bags at the concierge desk. Then we walked to Kai Kee on Kimberley Road for some pastry to eat later.

We were hacking and coughing as if it was a sport. Joanna said, let’s go to the airport; maybe the air is better.

Indeed it was better. 

We had lunch at Maxim’s Jade Garden again. We had three dim sum dishes. One was a group of dumplings of pork and shrimp wrapped in tofu skin called fu chuk, one of my favorite forms of tofu.

We also had taro cake, gray rectangles that tasted almost like potato pancakes, but not quite. Also very good.

In a nod to good health we had a leafy green, choi sum.

Our flight wasn’t leaving till 6:30, so we headed toward a sign that read the magic words, “craft beer.”

The bar, Beef & Liberty, seems to be connected in some way with a Hong Kong brewery called Moonzen (maybe even owned by them). All the brews are from Moonzen.

They had several taps including two ales. Jade Emperor, an IPA at 7 percent ABV, is bitter and pine-flavored with a mild fragrance.

Air Nimbus is a pale ale, at 4.5 percent not as strong as the IPA. According to the menu, it is made with yuzu, ginger, and white coriander. Joanna read the Chinese for me, and that’s how I learned that yuzu is pomelo.

I can’t say I picked out all those flavors, but the result is certainly spicy. Not unpleasant at all, but like sour ales, not something I’m going to want a lot of in one sitting.

They had a bottled amber ale called Monkey King. The label read in part: “Heavenly rebel to monk warrior, we have caught his beloved tale in our amber ale—a cheeky brew boasting a beautiful heart of caramel and fruity aroma of Queen Mother’s immortality peaches stolen by the Monkey King himself.”

I got the flavor of bitter chocolate, not unlike mole. 

We left on time, and the plane was delightfully uncrowded. Lots of people were able to take rows of seats and sleep lying down.

We were facing the wall where there is extra legroom. I was able to recline in coach for a change, and so was able to sleep for part of the trip. Joanna lay on the floor and slept, too. 

The flight lasted a little more than 14 hours, but wasn’t torturous because we were unconscious for part of it. 

Joanna said I was snoring for part of the way. Must have been the Monkey King up to his old tricks.

We’ll be in New Jersey for a month and then we plan to escape winter by driving to Hilton Head, S.C., for starters. The we turn West for a few weeks toward Phoenix.

We’re still hacking and coughing but not as much, so I guess our lungs are clearing.

Be well, all. 

And breathe easy.

Harry